Precious Things Protector

Introduction: Precious Things Protector

About: Hello, I am currently completing my dietetic internship to become a Registered Dietitian. I love all things related to food and nutrition and am always striving to find new ways to make meals easier and heal...
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Has your 3-year old or dog ever smashed or tried to eat the Christmas ornaments on the tree? We have little munchkin visiting this year so I made a sensor that will buzz if he gets too close to alert me. Then I can come running to tell the pup to knock it off or scoop up my nephew. Crisis averted!

This device can also be used as an alert for other precious things as well, such as a buzzer by the china cabinet or the garage door. My nephew often gets concerned when people leave the main room and go into the garage so he often sits outside the garage door. This can be a problem if someone opens the door. To avoid this, we could also install this buzzer alarm to alert the person in the garage that the baby is sitting by the door so they know to open the door slowly.

Step 1: Gathering Your Supplies

To begin you'll need to gather the following supplies:

LinkIt One Media Board

Groove Buzzer

Groove Distance Interrupter

Battery

A mischievous 3-year old or puppy

Step 2: Connect the Buzzer

To start we will need to connect the buzzer. It plugs right into the white Groove port (shown above).

We'll use this sensor to notify the adult in the house whenever our mischievous little one gets too close to our precious thing (i.e. Christmas tree).

Step 3: Connect the Distance Sensor & Battery

The last two things we need to connect to our LinkIt One is the distance sensor and the battery. The distance sensor gets plugged into the other white Groove port (shown above). The battery gets plugged into the white port in the lower left corner of your board (shown above). Now you are ready to fiddle with the code!

Step 4: Program the Buzzer

In order to make the buzzer work, you simply need to write a signal of 'HIGH' to it. This will send a high signal and make the buzzer turn on, emitting a painfully loud and annoying noise. This has a duel purpose: to alert you and scare away anyone who dares get close to your precious Christmas tree!

Step 5: Set-up & Program the Distance Sensor

The distance sensor is actually a little difficult to get the hang of at first. It took me a while to figure it out because you can't read different distances within the code. For example, you can't read "4 feet" or "2 feet away". Instead, you have to physically adjust the sensor to read an exact distance.

This means that it will only tell you if something is further than X or less than X units away. For our application, this will work great! How do you adjust this though? Well, you will have to pull out a tiny screwdriver and turn the little screw labeled 'R8'. Do this until the sensor stops beeping. That is your distance!

For our code, we'll just read if the signal is High or not (if someone has entered our danger zone!).